Six years ago, SpaceX was the upstart launch company seeking to break United Launch Alliance’s monopoly on national security space launches. Now, it’s part of the establishment. SpaceNews

The Pentagon has selected SpaceX and United Launch Alliance to conduct potentially dozens of national security launches between fiscal year 2022 and fiscal year 2027 SpaceNews

Satellite fleet operator SES has selected Thales Alenia Space to build two C-band satellites, making the Franco-Italian manufacturer the first European company to win one of nine replacement satellite orders placed this year as a result of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission’s upcoming C-band spectrum auction.  SpaceNews

A SpaceX Falcon 9 launched the latest set of the company’s Starlink satellites, along with two BlackSky imaging satellites, Aug. 7 after weeks of delays. SpaceNews

Boeing will build four additional O3b mPower satellites for SES under an order announced Aug. 7 to expand the constellation to 11 satellites in medium Earth orbit.  SpaceNews

Manufacturers agreed the cost of cubesats and small satellites of all sizes will decline as constellation developers and operators begin placing larger orders. SpaceNews

As small satellites become more powerful, manufacturers say they need better ways to manage excess heat generated by their electronics systems. SpaceNews

Maxar Technologies no longer expects, at least initially, to win any manufacturing contracts for Telesat’s future broadband megaconstellation of 300 satellites.  SpaceNews

The launch of a NASA astronomy smallsat mission next year will be postponed by several months after the pandemic delayed assembly of key elements of the spacecraft. SpaceNews

The percentage of small satellites that successfully complete their missions has improved in recent years even as the number of such satellites has dramatically increased. SpaceNews

Revenues for Lithuanian Nanosatellite manufacturer NanoAvionics tripled in the last 12 months as the company signed contracts with startups and industry veterans. SpaceNews

Col. Russell Teehan said commercially developed technologies will be part of the future capabilities of the U.S. Space Force. SpaceNews

The state will look at the required infrastructure, human capital development and financing necessary to support a commercial spaceport at Vandenberg. SpaceNews

ExoTerra Resources, a Colorado firm focused on propulsion and in-situ resource utilization, is preparing to quadruple production capacity to meet government and commercial demand. SpaceNews

The Russian company that markets commercial Soyuz launches says it is offering capacity on a launch of a Russian lunar mission next year for smallsat secondary payloads. SpaceNews

Commercial satellite operatorSES has selected SpaceX and United Launch Alliance to each launch two geostationary satellites designed to replace C-band capacity in the United States that the Federal Communications Commission is repurposing for 5G cellular networks.  SpaceNews

NASA’s MarCO mission showed that interplanetary cubesat missions, while possible, are anything but easy. SpaceNews

The NASA astronauts who flew on the SpaceX Demo-2 commercial crew vehicle said they were pleasantly surprised at how well the Crew Dragon spacecraft performed. SpaceNews

After months of delays and testing setbacks, a prototype of SpaceX’s Starship next-generation reusable launch vehicle made a brief “hop” flight Aug. 4 at the company’s South Texas test site. SpaceNews

China is advancing the development of the Chang'e-7 lunar south pole mission and a complex campaign to study comets and return samples from a near-Earth asteroid with a single orbiter. SpaceNews